restoring, by private subscriptions, some baths and wash-houses in
Bethnal Green, which had fallen to decay. And there may be two or
three more about the metropolis; for parish vestries have powers
by Act of Parliament to establish such places, if they think fit,
and choose to pay for them out of the rates." Then, I think, the
august shade might well make answer: "We used to call you, in old
Rome, northern barbarians. It seems that you have not lost all
your barbarian habits. Are you aware that, in every city in the
Roman empire, there were, as a matter of course, public baths
open, not only to the poorest freeman, but to the slave, usually
for the payment of the smallest current coin, and often
gratuitously? Are you aware that in Rome itself, millionaire
after millionaire, emperor after emperor, from Menenius Agrippa
and Nero down to Diocletian and Constantine, built baths, and yet
more baths; and connected with them gymnasia for exercise,
lecture-rooms, libraries, and porticoes, wherein the people might
have shade, and shelter, and rest? I remark, by-the-bye, that I
have not seen in all your London a single covered place in which
the people may take shelter during a shower. Are you aware that
these baths were of the most magnificent architecture, decorated
with marbles, paintings, sculptures, fountains, what not? And yet
I had heard, in Hades down below, that you prided yourselves here
on the study of the learned languages; and, indeed, taught little
but Greek and Latin at your public schools?"

Then, if the minister should make reply: "Oh yes, we know all
this. Even since the revival of letters in the end of the
fifteenth century a whole literature has been written--a great
deal of it, I fear, by pedants who seldom washed even their hands
and faces--about your Greek and Roman baths. We visit their